Peter Guralnick. Photo by David Ghar.

Peter Guralnick, Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ’n’ Roll (Little, Brown; 661 pages)
&
Sam Phillips: The Man Who
Invented Rock ’n’ Roll (YepRoc Records)
A Review

That descriptive identifier, “The Man Who Invented Rock ’n’ Roll,” says biographer Peter Guralnick in his author’s note at the front of the book, is one that Sam Phillips “would have both claimed and
disclaimed . . . , as he frequently did, more often than not in the same elongated sentence.”

If we unpack Guralnick’s sentence, we begin to get a picture of the complex, charming, exasperating, visionary, and profoundly human being whose ear caught something new and different—“different” being the Sam Phillips’ standard of excellence—in the air as various strands of American music were entwining themselves into rock ’n’ roll. His
Memphis Recording Services studio and Sun Records label provided a laboratory where he and a host of artists, black and white, explored the possibilities of that new music in the 1950s and ’60s. Continue reading →